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M. Krauss, A. Zezas, P. Kaaret, R. Kilgard, M. Raley, J. McDowell, A. Prestwich (SAO)
Spiral galaxies are complex X-ray sources. There is evidence for diffuse emission from hot gas, but it is a multitude of discrete sources which dominate the total flux. The discrete source population is thought to arise from X-ray luminous supernova remnants and X-ray binaries; however, pre-Chandra observations suffered from poor resolution, making it impossible to distinguish between these possibilities. Here we present X-ray and optical observations of the nearby (8.6 Mpc) face-on spiral galaxy NGC 3184. NGC 3184 does not have any evidence for an AGN; the nuclear region has an HII region spectrum. It was observed twice with Chandra, in Jan and Feb 2000. We show that at least 1/3 of the discrete sources are variable, suggesting that they are accretion sources. Approximately 1/3 of the X-ray sources are coincident with an optical source, mostly HII regions. Finally, we show that there is no evidence for dramatic variations of the X-ray hardness ratio as a function of distance from the nucleus, perhaps suggesting that the binary production rate is in steady state in this disk galaxy.